


Bang

by CactusWren



Series: Finger Exercises [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Graphic Description, I will fill this prompt but I cannot promise what I'll fill it with, Ose, Ose MOROSE, Self-Harm, Suicide, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-22
Updated: 2012-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-19 06:23:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/570177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CactusWren/pseuds/CactusWren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In "The Reichenbach Fall", Sherlock took John "hostage".  What if the gun had gone off?</p><p>Two different visions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The short pieces I post to the KinkMeme are mostly in the nature of finger exercises for writing: just playing around, seeing if I can fill a prompt (usually not in the nature of anything I'd normally write) while remaining true to the characters as I see them and keeping my writing muscles in shape. So I've called this loose assemblage, mostly of prompt fills, the Finger Exercises series.

“Tell Lestrade he can discontinue the suicide watch.”

Sally Donovan stands still, looking in through the bars of the holding cell. She can think of absolutely no response. She wonders why she came in here.

Sherlock Holmes sits slumped on the edge of the bunk. An uncharacteristic posture for him, legs sprawled, elbows on knees, staring down past his clasped hands at the floor. He hasn't moved since he was put in here, five hours ago.

They gave him an orange jumpsuit, but there's still blood in his hair.

“Sally,” he says. “I know you never wanted to be right.” His voice is quiet, calm, with only a hint of a tremor. “All those times you said that someday the body at your feet would be my work – you wanted to be wrong. I'm sorry you weren't. How long did the longest-lived person in history survive?”

She blinks. How does his mind do this, jump from one topic to another? “A hundred fifty-two years,” she says, automatically. “Old Tom Parr. Born fourteen eighty-three, died sixteen thirty-five.”

He shakes his head. “Hoax. No proper record of his birth. Pity, though.”

“Why?”

“Because that's how long I need to live. Longer, if I can.” His shoulders hunch, his hands begin to fret at each other. “So tell Lestrade, there's no need for a suicide watch. I need – I deserve – to live as long as I can, and never, not for one single moment, be able to think of anything but – ”

He's shaking, now, every muscle. His hands twist together. “He was so – limp. Warm, and I shook him, but he just fell away from me. I told him to come with me, get up, we had to run, but it was only flesh, not John. There's no such thing as a soul, Sally, no immortality after death. Consciousness is in the brain. And that's what I – all that he was, everything, the essential John-ness. I destroyed that. And saying 'But I didn't mean to' doesn't change anything.”

His breath comes in gasps. “John. His – _face._ He only looked surprised, startled, as if someone had dropped a piece of ice down his neck. I used to do that to my brother in summer. His head would come up, his eyes would widen – that's just how John looked. And then he – _half of his head,”_ the voice is thin and barely audible. “Half, gone, all over the street. All over. It's all over. I can't stop seeing him, Sally, _what made him John_ was all over the street and the car and m-my _clothes,_ I can see it and I'll never see anything else –”

And then without warning he's on his knees, on the floor, screaming, clawing at his face, and her hand comes down hard on the alarm button. And oh sweet Jesus there's _blood,_ so much blood, the cell door opens and he's screaming and she tries to pry his hands away from his face but he's stronger than she is, who would have thought anyone so thin could be so strong, he's screaming _never stop seeing it, never stop seeing it_ and the blood is all over his face and his hands and his jumpsuit and oh sweet fucking Christ _his eyes are in his hands_ and the guards are on him but it's too late, they wrestle him down, restrain him, someone shouts for paramedics and they force him down, strap him onto a stretcher, and as he's carried away his blind blood-filled sockets are turned to her and he's screaming, “Sally! Sally! Please, Sally, cut my hands off! Sally, _please!”_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, though, I realize it would actually far more likely go like this.
> 
> (This chapter ends with what may appear to be a posting error but is not.)

“My hostage!” Sherlock shouts. He transfers the gun to his free hand and presses it against John's head.

“Hostage,” John breathes. “Yeah, that – ”

More sound than Sherlock has ever imagined possible. The gun wrenches at his hand, and John –

– yanks away from him, as if trying to flee in sudden panic –

– falls, drops away from him, onto the ground. Hanging limp from the handcuffs. There's so much blood everywhere, where could it –

Oh.

_Oh._

John's eyes. One of them is wrong, it's not in the right place, it should be _in_ his head but instead it's lying against his cheekbone, dangling from the cordage of the optic nerve. As Sherlock watches, it rolls off his cheek and falls into the ragged wet concavity that is the side of John's head. Is it still transmitting signals, information, with no visual cortex there to receive it?

John's lips are still pursed around whatever he'd been about to say. And there's a stench – oh, blood, and the fatty smell of brain tissue, and of course bladder and bowels have voided.

(Some part of Sherlock's mind is wailing, sobbing like a beaten child, “I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to! I'm sorry, John, I'm _sorry!”)_

The shriek of tinnitus fills Sherlock's ears. Somewhere on the other side of it, Lestrade is shouting. Probably something boundlessly inane on the order of “Sherlock, put the gun down. You don't want to make this any worse than it is.”

Upon which Sherlock cannot be bothered even to make mental comment.

He can't remember when he fell to his knees, or when he began to shake, or to gasp for breath. Still kneeling, he straightens up, looks into Lestrade's eyes. “Conclusion,” he says, enunciating with great clarity. “Obvious conclusion.”

The gun's barrel is hot against his tongue and the roof of hi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I realize the "orange jumpsuit" I've dressed Sherlock in, for Chapter 1, is an Americanism. If someone can offer the appropriate equivalent I'll gladly correct it.
> 
> Sherlock's description of John's facial expression in Chapter 1 is drawn from autopsy photographs of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
> 
> Written for a prompt at the LJKM, http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/20063.html?thread=120917343#t120917343:  
>  _When Sherlock takes John hostage, and holds the gun at John't head, the gun goes off killing John._


End file.
